I got a catalog from Heifer International today, and think it's such a cool idea. Their plan is to help families all over the world to become self-reliant by donating animals to them, with the agreement that each family will in turn donate one of their animals' young to another similarly struggling family, and so on.

You can buy an animal or a share of an animal (for example, a goat costs $120 but a share of a goat is $10) in someone's name, and then that person will receive a card telling them about the gift made in his/her honor. Heifer International has been around since 1944, so I'm surprised to not have heard about them before now. But now that I have, I am going to buy a few flocks of chicks ($20 each) for families in Cameroon, Nicaragua, or South Africa.

Orders have to be made before December 4 to be delivered by Dec. 24th, though, so keep that in mind!

I LOVE Heifer International!! A friend of ours even gave us a "gift" from them as a wedding present! This is one of my most favorite charities around!!! I love how their policy doesn't stop at the gift, but rather they have to pass on offspring to others. Kind of the "pay it forward" idea!

ive heard f this before. heres another site ... www.thehungersite.com just clicking e0ach day feeds the hungery. theres tabs at the top and clicking on those sites donates books, cancer research rainforest stuff and others. they also have Awesome items for gifts.

There's one close to where I grew up. School kids can take field trips there. They have replicas of different villages from around the world where the volunteers that take the animals to the people, live for a while and learn what to expect. It is really cool.

I donate everyyear in my dad's name. He has every gadget he'll even need, so it's become an ongoing thing, last year I bought a llama. He gets great use of it, when he goes to see clients in January and asks how thier holidays went and the other guy says he got another golf gadget that doesn't work, Dad comes out with "Know what you mean my girl bought me a Llama, last year it was a goat".